SLIDESHOW: Economic and political challenges abound in efforts to manage horses on public lands

Commissioned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to study the effectiveness of efforts to manage the wild horse population on western lands, a National Research Council (NRC) committee published its report, “Using Science to Improve the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program: A Way Forward,” in the National Academies Press this spring. The committee concluded that the program’s current practices are unsustainable. If processes go unchanged and trends continue, experts say the already overpopulated American West could see the number of horses double in four years and triple in six years.

Click here to read the article, “A Critical Crossroad for BLM’s Wild Horse Program,” by Robert A. Garrott of Montana State University and Madan K. Oli of the University of Florida, published in Science magazine’s August 2013 issue.